


the coming of age, the beautiful trouble

by leslie057



Series: Jancy week 2020 [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Poetry, Romance, Teen Romance, Youth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslie057/pseuds/leslie057
Summary: a poem written for jancy week day 4 theme: youth
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler
Series: Jancy week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994266
Kudos: 5





	the coming of age, the beautiful trouble

She is nice to him in class;  
She looks on with care across canary grass  
As he checks on Will and the scrape along his tiny knee.  
The weekdays bring him trouble and brain-dead slights,  
The repetitive proud bites  
About how he shies like some dumb lamb and does  
Not go to hunt.  
At only ten, they call him ‘deaf,’ ‘mistake,’ and ‘cunt’  
With no hesitation  
To ask in him the unnecessary question:  
Will I always be a problem?  
Unless an older Jonathan can climb upward from the bottom.

The weekdays bring him trouble,  
And Nancy never does.

The warm spring air that hurtles toward them in an early hurry  
Wags its tail and tortures him like photos that turn blurry.  
Sweaters do not go without his temples making sweat.  
Will the cigarette burns on his arm lead to a flurry  
Of her disgusted comments which carry on amongst their peers?  
He’ll lose his minor progress just like that,  
And when he joins her nice family for Easter  
She may recoil from him, a twelve-year-old black cat.

But her kindness persists strong  
In wordless conversations which console  
And convince him there is time to feel whole.  
Time for invisibility and the quiet he extols.  
(Some would argue he is already unseen.)  
His pale skin, transparent like a phantom’s, makes a scene  
Of his strange introversion, allowing for an edge that’s cold and keen.  
Did he once roll  
Over on the wrong side of his baby bed?  
The effect might last so long  
Through traditions and transitions which affect his wild head.

The weekdays bring him trouble,  
And Nancy never does.

The two of them grow up, grow out, and grow as inverses.  
He broods all day behind his heart’s wall and books,  
She tilts up her chin, hangs onto dainty earring hooks.  
Then, on a raw November night, his nightmare comes and intersperses  
Dark images in mom’s outlook.  
So how will they go on?

Once again, he wishes to be an Invisible Man  
Who didn’t have to steady his mother’s shaking hand.

Against logic and sense, his brother’s ‘death’ is undone,  
Erased by the most magical of girls,  
Formerly alone...mute...confusion unfurls,  
Was Will’s savior then gone, number 1 number 1.

For the first time, Nancy brings trouble.  
Can he, after bear traps and kitchen knives,  
Expect further interlock of their unlike lives?  
Though they have theorized and tested, though they have cut themselves,  
Though they have pointed a monster  
In their very direction  
(It was her idea; she turned out to be more than her perfection),  
He doesn’t know what she wants,  
If she wants anything at all save for the memories of their partnership  
Which even after amnesia would still haunt  
Them.

No memories ever pass, but time does.  
He’s seventeen.  
Nancy has braided her trouble into his routine.

Her love grows long...grows long…  
She is spoken for in his playlists’ every song  
Which fill her ears with weird white noise as he kisses them.  
Their arguments don’t keep on because she misses him,  
And he hates to argue  
When they could instead laugh and read and eat and fold their arms around  
Each other.

No memories ever pass, but distance does.

And her mild trouble  
Across the statelines  
Remains his favorite distraction.

**Author's Note:**

> decided to try poetry???? (because Feelings)


End file.
